How can lizards spread to islands by floating on vegetation or traveling with people?

Lizards are highly successful at colonizing oceanic islands due to their physiological traits, such as low metabolic rates and the ability to excrete nitrogenous waste as uric acid, which reduces their need for fresh water.1

Lizards can reach islands through two primary methods:

• Rafting: Many lizards can survive for extended periods without fresh water while traveling on mats of floating vegetation in rivers and oceans. This makes them ideal colonizers, with gecko eggs being particularly well-suited for such journeys due to their hard shells.1
• Human-Assisted Travel: Some small species, such as geckos, have successfully colonized many islands and invaded urban areas worldwide by "rafting" or traveling with humans on boats. These introduced species often thrive in disturbed environments created by human activity, though they typically do not invade undisturbed habitats.2

These adaptations allow lizards to maintain a significant presence on oceanic islands, where the diversity of other groups like mammals and amphibians is often limited.1